I’m Diana Swillinger, and this is the Renew Your Mind podcast. Episode 55 Mind Renewal Thoughts
DIANA: Hey. Hey, everybody. What is up? I’m doing great, as always. I am flying high from the Renew Your Mind boot camp last week. It was so awesome. There were people there from Norway and UK. Germany, Canada, Mexico, US. All over. It was so fun. Um, gave away an iPad. Yes, we did. Shipping it out tomorrow. So it was a really great time. And if you are regretting missing the Renew Your Mind bootcamp last week, don’t worry. You can go to the Renew Your Mind community on Facebook and join. The replays are in there. They’re just right in the feed. You can go back and you can watch it all right there for you. All right. And what I’m going to share with you today is going to be some quotes, I guess, or thoughts. One of the boot camp members who she’s been on the podcast before, I coached her, Andy Marks. She came to boot camp every day, and then she made these beautiful images of things I said. So she was, like, quoting me things that stood out to her, which I thought was fascinating and awesome because, uh, I talk all the time in my job, and I have to tell you, I do forget what I say a lot of the time.
So thank God Andy captured some of the things I said because these are foundational things. These are the things I teach, the people I coach all the time. And she captured them in these sweet little sentences that I just have to pass on to you. I tried to put them in a little bit of an order that made sense too, because we talked through lessons of the coaching program that I teach, where we talk about what’s in our control, what’s not, our thoughts, our emotions. We put it all together. And then we also did a little work on the list, which you guys have heard me talk about before. And so some great quotes about what we do with a list for others, but also for ourselves. So I want to read these quotes to you today, and you guys can just sit back, relax, and enjoy. Maybe you don’t even have to think too hard today. Just listen. Before we do that, I have another review from itunes that I want to read to you. All right, this is coming from Lauren ASC 85. The review is on itunes. That’s where you can go. Leave a review, but you can subscribe anywhere. It totally helps the podcast grow and helps more people get their mind renewal tips and practices and tools and all the stuff that they need to start feeling better. So please go subscribe. Go. Leave a review. You’re going to help other people get access to this, so what Lauren says is seriously good. Diana has this way of calmly and collectively entering into your space and leaving you with hope and practical steps to get beyond your thought patterns while you make simple, intentional mindset shifts. Each and every episode is pure gold. I love it. Thank you so much, Lauren, for leaving that. I love the encouragement, but I think you kind of described it well, too. So people who are searching for podcasts, they can tell what this podcast is like from that comment. So well done and thank you so much.
All right, you all ready for quotes from boot camp? The way we think changes everything. The more time we spend working on ourselves, the better we show up for everyone else. Here’s a longer one. Because we are made in God’s image. We have the longing in us for the perfection of eternity. We’re supposed to want that God put that in us. We wish nobody had to hurt. But that’s not how God made our earthly experience to be. It’s not how he allowed it to happen. He allowed for pain and suffering to be here for us, to be refined in the fire. If everything was fine, would we forget about God? Would we care about worshipping Him? Would his love and glory seem special at all? What growing would we do? Stop wishing others would change. Let people be people. M their thoughts and words are about them. It’s not about me. Ultimately, nobody gets to push our buttons unless we participate. We try to control people and circumstances so we can feel better. And because we don’t trust that God is going to work it all together for good. Isn’t that true? Man, I’m like I said, that. That’s good.
All right, here we go. When you know what it is you want to feel when you’re trying to control somebody else, now you have the key to stop trying to control them. This one I’m going to comment on for just a moment. What that means is when you know what it is, you want to feel like, I’m controlling that person so I can feel secure. I’m trying to control that person so I can feel appreciated. I’m trying to control that person so I can feel peace. Usually it’s the opposite of some negative emotion that we’re feeling. We want to feel something better when we know what it is we want to feel. We can take control of that. We can work on our thoughts. We can pick thoughts and believe truth that help us feel that regardless of how the other person behaves. That’s, uh what that one meant. The actions of others are not about you. It’s about them wanting to feel better. You get relief if you believe that. Then you get to decide what it is you want to do. The three things you always have control over are what you think, what you feel, and what you do. God gave that to us. Notice that one didn’t say we had control over other people, but we have control over us. God gave it to us. Free will. One person looking at and working on and improving themselves can change a relationship.
Thoughts come fast, but emotions come and hang out with us. You got that one. Thoughts come fast, but emotions come and hang out with us. This is why we have to pay attention to our emotions. We have thousands of thoughts a, uh, day flying through our brain. But the emotions come and linger. They hang out with us. If we can figure out what emotion it is we’re feeling. And I don’t mean we say I’m feeling bad or I’m feeling upset. Sometimes we got to get a little more specific or nuanced than that. Our emotions hang out with us and we have the opportunity to figure out what it is we’re feeling. And then we have the power to uncover what it is we’re thinking and figure out why we’re feeling that way and we get so much leverage. Tune into your emotions, people. Okay, next one. All emotions have their place. God gave all of them to us on purpose. Processing emotion. When you want to process emotion, think of these. If I named the emotion, what would it be? If m I described where I feel it in my body, I would say if I gave the emotion a color, it would be if I could hold it in my hand and touch it, what would it feel like? Sometimes? HM, this one sounds kind of crazy or woo woo to people. Like processing our emotions in this way, what would it look like? What does it feel like? More practically, the reality is, where do you feel in your body? Muscles and vibrations and shaking and tension. But we can get a little more creative and we can get more descriptive about it. And what this does is it allows us to process our emotion by taking us out of a thought loop that’s creating the emotion. And now we’re just present with the emotion and we can be with it and allow it and let it be okay, we can befriend it, give it space. And now we’re actually processing it.
Emotions are at the center of everything we do, and they deserve us paying attention to them. They are the key to getting more healing in your life. More hope, more compassion, all of it. At one point, I was coaching someone on what to do in her life. And apparently I said this there is no right or wrong here. You get to just make a decision and move forward. Maybe there’s no right or wrong in relational conflict. Instead of feeling contempt or frustration or hurt, if you could dial up love and acceptance and compassion, what would that do for your relationship? If you’re picking an emotion, curious is going to feel a lot better than resentment or anger. I’ll just unpack that one a little bit. If you’re in a relationship where you’re feeling resentment and anger, instead of blaming the other person and thinking they’re doing it wrong, that’s where resentment and anger comes from. You could get curious. I wonder what’s going on for that person. I wonder. I wonder why today’s hard. I wonder why they feel angry. I wonder if it’s hard to be that person.
I’m very curious. That feels a lot better than resentment and anger. Can you imagine all the amazing things you could do in your life? If you could pick the emotions on purpose, that would drive the behavior that you want? That would bring all the things you want in your life to fruition? Here was one about a tough relationship. These are possible thoughts when you’re having a hard time forgiving or loving someone. I’m working on learning to love this person. I’m working on learning to forgive this person. I don’t love this person yet or today, but I know God does. And I’m going to work on loving them like God does. When we learn to allow ourselves the experience of all the emotions, even the ones we might normally consider bad, it changes everything. It opens up the world to us. Trying to feel happy when you have sadness to deal with doesn’t work. Suppressing our discomfort doesn’t work. Life is supposed to be filled with positive and negative emotions. Learning how to process them and embrace them is one of the most important things we can do to start creating the life we want.
Guilt comes from thinking I did something wrong. Shame comes from thinking there’s something wrong with me. Shame leads to hiding, which prevents us from moving forward and becoming who we want to be. Oh, this one’s good. This is a re quote, you guys. My mom says this god is bigger than that. Whatever’s going on in your life, whatever seems wrong, whatever pain, whatever’s upsetting, whatever is hard, god is bigger than that. It is possible that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be on your journey. It’s possible. Before you have an emotion, you are having thoughts. Be courageous in questioning your thoughts. Just because you think something doesn’t make it true. Questioning your Thoughts when you’re questioning your thoughts, ask these questions is it true? Does it serve me? Is it honoring God? The thoughts, words and actions of others are not what’s going to cause you to feel anything. What causes you to feel something is what you decide to think after it happens. We need a thought that helps us shift off the negative thought even just a little. Be curious. What else could you think that you can actually believe that takes you off the negative thought. Hating yourself does not work to bring into your life what you want. That starts with loving yourself first, right where you’re at. Accept you as you are today, even without changing anything about you.
God made me in his image exactly the way he wanted me to be. He put me on Earth where I’m going to have pain, I’m going to make mistakes, but I’m going to learn and I’m going to grow. None of this journey that he’s put me on, on purpose, none of this experience, none of these circumstances determine my worth. Maybe that imperfect situation was exactly how it was supposed to be so that I could have the experience I was meant to have. M the brain wants to avoid pain, pursue pleasure, and save energy. Coaching is exploring how we are feeling and thinking about things and then seeing how we might want to make a shift in our mind, that’s pretty good. Overwhelmed is that feeling that comes whenever we think there is more stuff to do than I have time to get done. Which, by the way, you don’t have to think that. You can think something totally different and then not feel overwhelmed. It’s possible. There is a difference between have to and want to. This was a thought that I said, a thought we gave somebody who I was coaching. I figured it out before, I’m going to figure it out again. That’s an empowerment thought. I love that one.
If you don’t want to be stuck, the key is to think and feel something different. What you think is what you get. What you think is what will start happening in your life. This one was a question and then my response. The question was, how do you juggle it all? My response you don’t. These were some thoughts I was giving the, uh, boot camp attendees to consider for themselves. It’s possible I can figure it out. Maybe I can figure this out. I’m working on choosing to believe that I can figure this out. I haven’t found out what works yet, but I know I will. New tracks. If we keep thinking the thoughts that we are used to thinking, we will stay in that rut. The old pattern of thinking. If we want to think something new, we have to get out of the worn down path, we have to get out of the rut and we have to go create a new path. The more times you go over the new path, you will start creating a new track. If you do it even in one area of your life, the neural pathways will now pave the way for other new thoughts. If you’re willing to do the work and create the new thought, this is really good. I want to add to this that this just means you can work on one area of your life. You can start thinking something new in one way, in one situation. And you can start training your brain to go more to the positive, more to problem solving, more to figuring things out, and less to victimhood or stuckness or overwhelm.
You don’t have to fix every area that you have a thinking error. You can just work in one thought, and it can affect many other thoughts in all areas of your life. I love that. Well, here’s my favorite all time quote ever because it came from my sister. She said this many, many years ago about other people let them, whatever it is they’re doing. Let them whatever it is they’re thinking. Let them whatever it is they’re saying, let them. This is all about not trying to control other people, right? Let the people be the people. Next quote. Boundaries are never to try to control someone else’s behavior. We mix that one up all the time. So many of us create boundaries trying to change someone else’s behavior. That’s not what they’re for. Boundaries are never to try to control someone else’s behavior. What boundaries are for is a decision you’re making for yourself, to protect yourself, or to honor a preference or a moral or a value you have. It’s what you choose to do when someone else behaves a certain way, but it’s never to try to control their behavior. We can still have our values and morals and preferences without putting them on a list for someone else. We don’t need to try to control them, and we don’t want to tie our emotional well being to another person’s behavior. The reason we have a list for someone else is because we want them to act a certain way and do a certain thing so that we can feel okay. Why not just work on feeling okay without requiring anyone to do something different?
When we have resentment and don’t forgive, we’re the ones suffering. We don’t forgive for the benefit of others. We do it for ourselves. When you have a list for someone else and they don’t meet all of your expectations, you’re going to resent them. You’ll be frustrated with them, or you’ll think they’re not good enough. We do the same thing when we have a list for ourselves. M m. When we think I am not enough, it is because we have a list of expectations for ourselves. The first thing you’ve got to do with the list is to notice you have one. Admit it. The list are the expectations we think we need to do to be worthy, to be valuable, to be good enough. You have a list for yourself because you want to feel adequate and prove yourself as worthy and valuable. When you have a list of expectations to prove your adequacy, you’re going to fail. The list of expectations does not work. Let me add it was never meant to work. You were never supposed to prove your value and worth by meeting expectations. So let’s stop trying. Next quote no list will change my value. Maybe God wants us to wonder about our worth so that we can turn to Him, not ourselves and our own capabilities. And then when we turn to Him, we find our value and our worth. It doesn’t come from some list. There is nothing you can or cannot do to change your value. You are valuable. You need to know that I am worthy because God said I am. The more aware we are of what our needs are and what we’re hoping to feel, the better informed we are to make decisions of what we want to do differently. Awareness is 80% of what we need to do to let go of what is keeping us feeling stuck and frustrated and start moving into feeling more peace, more empowered, and more supported. These are little changes that make a big difference. This is the way to becoming more Christlike. This is the journey to growing in love and compassion. This is how we develop the skill of finding joy in all circumstances. This is a journey. There is no rush. Just keep taking the next step.
As an advanced certified life coach, I help Christian women trying to live their best lives, but they still feel unsatisfied and stuck. I teach thought management skills that work so you can enjoy life again and step into who God has created you to be. Don’t forget to head on over to Ry Mpodcast Um.com to get my free resources or a free coaching call.
